NB:Aviles understates "Marcos' Victory." The demonstrations in
Prague arethe offspring of a process of global activism that began at the
FirstIntercontinental Encounter in Chiapas in the summer of 1996. A
secondIntercontinental followed in Spain in 1997. Then came
themobilizatonagainst the WTO in Genevan, then the one in Seattle, then
Washington,Davos and now Prague. It was the Zapatista Call for global
grassrootsmobilization for the First Intercontinental that set the current
worldwidelevel of activism in motion.Harry

Originally
published in Spanish by La Jornada_______________________Translated by
irlandesa

La JornadaSaturday, September 30, 2000.

El
Tonto del Pueblo

Prague: Marcos' Victory

*Jaime
Avile's*

1.A Brief Dissertation on Cockroaches.

Regarding
the meeting of the World Bank and the International MonetaryFund, which
began in Prague on Tuesday, Luis Herna'ndez Navarro proposed anunfortunate
comparison between the President of the Czech Republic - theplaywright
Vaclav Havel - the celebrated personality Franz Kafka, and poorGregorio
Samsa, who was transformed, in a horrible metamorphosis, into
acockroach. By setting up police machinery in order to contain the
protestsof European civil society against the summit meeting of the richest
of therich, Havel, according to Navarro, had "turned into a neoliberal
beetle." No matter how one looks at it, the comparison is unfair…to Gregorio
Samsa.

Many years ago, in a memorable essay on Kafka (The Aesthetic Ideas
of Marx,Era Publishing), the professor Adolfo Sa'nchez Va'zquez - recently
honored bythe government of Rosario Robles Berlanga - described Samsa as a
victim,never as a tyrant. Upon waking up in his bed, following a
restless night's sleep, and slowly becoming aware of his new condition, no
longer aman, but an insect, Samsa denounced this fate as being the effects
of theauthoritarianism prevailing in his country and in his times. A
member ofthe educated petit bourgeoisie, employed as a clerk by a huge
bureaucraticagency in which nothing made sense, deprived of any rights aside
from theabsurd order which nonetheless granted him certain privileges (as
long ashe didn't rebel, of course), Samsa exemplifies the castration and
thesubjection of an individual and of a people in the face of the whims of
anautocratic and unapproachable government. In that symbolic
tragedy,Sanchez Va'zquez traced the most degrading characteristics of the
Sovietdictatorship which would, many years after Kafka, impose Stalin's
criminalcronies.

Havel, on the other hand, is not a victim, but
rather a clear-thinkingmoralist who fought the intolerance of the "currently
existing socialist"model through theater. As an artist and as a
political activist, he ledthe final chapter of the resistance against
Moscow's colonialism, and heemerged from the battle victorious. As
Chief of State, he led thepartitioning of Czechoslovakia into two autonomous
nations, and he did sowhile successfully avoiding the spilling of
blood. In addition, a yearago, he unhesitatingly supported the fight
against the racist tyrantSlobodan Milosevic in Serbia, but, at the same
time, he opposed the NATObombing, an effort which coincided with that of
many civil organizationswhich are boycotting the World Bank and IMF meeting
this week.

2.>From the Authoritarian "Democracy"

Unlike
Gregorio Samsa, Vaclav Havel is a man of power, immersed in the newrules of
the game. By promoting the conference of the multilateralagencies
which are responsible for the widespread misery of humanity in hissmall
Czech Republic, he did not undergo any metamorphosis: he was alreadya
neoliberal politician when he took over government leadership, and, withthe
backing even of US musician Frank Zappa, he began guiding thetransition of a
planned or "socialist" economy towards the current "freemarket" model. Those
who today see him as a kind of Eastern European FelipeGonzalez have reached,
then, tardy conclusions. But, in theirdetermination to discredit, they
overlook the fact that, prior to thesummit, Havel made a proposal of
enormous importance which should not beforgotten. Although it has,
thus far, remained on paper…

In effect, and in an attempt to dissuade the
direct protests of thousandsof young persons from all over Europe, who had
arranged to meet in Praguein order to abort the witch's sabbath of the
owners of the world, Havelorganized a dialogue between World Bank and IMF
officials and arepresentative committee of the demonstrating
organizations. The meeting,as far as is known up until now (that is,
nothing), has not been verified,but the idea alone outlines the route for a
path which should (even thoughit still cannot be) followed, and which was
pointed out a few months ago bynone other than Subcomandante
Marcos.

In an essay entitled Oxymoron (in allusion to a literary form
involvingfacts or things which are contradictory in and of themselves, for
example,"a dark light"), the zapatista chief included an astute observation
by theCatalan thinker Ignacio Ramonet, the director of Le Monde
Diplomatique,which helps us see the following with clarity: while
democracy is seen tobe the most prized value within the framework of the
"new world order,"multilateral agencies - which express the interests of the
richest of therich - enforce economic "development" programs every day which
affectmillions of persons, altering or destroying their lives, changing
theirdestiny and that of their children, worsening poverty and
marginalizationfor the benefit of a handful of companies. What is
paradoxical about this,Ramonet notes, is that these projects have never been
subjected to aconsultation: they are not voted on in a universal
election, they are notthe matter of a plebiscite. They are simply
carried out, and there are nodemocratic mechanisms for rejecting them or for
subjecting them to any kindof monitoring.

Attentive to these
thoughts, which still do not form part of the Europeanpolitical agenda,
Havel offered to let the Prague demonstrators set up adialogue table with
spokespersons from the World Bank and the IMF, so thatthe latter could
expound upon, and the former could ask questions about,300 far-reaching
programs related to problems with the environment, humanrights, employment,
health, education, etcetera. Unfortunately, theOff-Prague - to call it
that - was not possible, but the mere enunciationof this goal now defines a
political objective for social organizations allover the world who are
fighting to achieve a true democracy.

And so, the uprising that exploded
in Seattle with the imaginativemobilization of the de-globalized is
beginning to have an increasinglyconcrete program of action. After
Prague, everyone's task, all over theworld, will consist in multiplying
forces, initiatives and mechanisms ofcoordination in order to get the World
Bank and the IMF to sit down anddiscuss their "adjustment programs" with
humanity, to impose new forms ofinternational arbitration and to force them
to accept the judgments theyrender. They are barely the first stones
of the foundation over which wewill have to raise the new historical project
of the left, as analternative, in order to begin the next stage of
civilization...